human rights had started with movements such as abolitionism and utopian
socialism which had operated under the umbrella of liberalism. From an early
stage the latter had been supported by feminists, but feeling that they had not
received a similar degree of support in return, they eventually created a
movement of their own, with several contradictory strands. Some of these
were ‘radical’ for the standards of the day, as they argued for complete
equality with men. Others supported the patriarchal system while asking for
some legal amendments that gave women more autonomy over their own
aVairs, as well as allowing them to have the educational opportunities still
reserved for men alone and to be economically independent (Allen 2004;
Moses 1984: 83). Within the feminist movement those who lobbied for
women’s voting rights were called the SuVragettes. The development of
feminism as an ideology can be connected to the fact that during the late
nineteenth century theWrst women started to work as professional archae-
ologists. Most of these women and their followers during the pioneering
period up to the First World War belonged to the well-oVclasses. Although
they could be referred to as feminists by the very fact that they had chosen
to work, given their class background many would have been horriWed by
this identiWcation. Some of these early professional women archaeologists
were outspokenly opposed to suVragism and even defended the need for
women to remain at home as mothers and wives (Dı ́az-Andreu & Sørensen
1998b: 20, 35).
As professionals these women, as their male counterparts, played an active
role in the elaboration of national identity. Johanna Mestorf’s role as curator
oftheMuseumofNationalAntiquities(MuseumVaterla ̈ndischerAlterthu ̈mer)
in Kiel, and, later, professor at the university of the same city, is an example of
this. To be a professional archaeologist in institutions located in a disputed
borderland between Germany and Denmark necessarily required her to
take a political stance (Dı ́az-Andreu & Sørensen 1998a: 11). Professional
women had several challenges to overcome. First, their place in society—
and therefore their possible contribution for the national cause—was still
believed to be inferior. Evolutionism had proposed biological explanations for
the inferiority of women. In most cases, evolutionist scholars such as Henry
Maine (1822–88), John Ferguson MacLennan (1827–81), Sir John Lubbock
(1834–1913) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) justiWed the patriarchal sys-
tem. The Swiss Professor of Roman Law, Johann Bachofen (1815–87), had
proposed in his bookMutterrechtin 1856 that there had been a transform-
ation from a prehistoric matriarchal society, the Earth- or Mother-Goddess
(Kuper 1988: 5–6), to a patriarchal society with male gods. This widely
accepted evolutionary theory was taken to explain women’s inferiority.
An exception in this respect was Oscar Montelius (1843–1921), a famous
372 National Archaeology in Europe